You could ultimately be right that they took the better of the two options and that this path would have killed them. I personally disagree. I think there is a

You could ultimately be right that they took the better of the two options and that this path would have killed them. I personally disagree. I think there is also more Grey here. They could have de prioritized things in the algorithm to encourage the direction of the community without explicitly depltforming anyone or blocking\removing content. I think its possible that they could have achieved a lot of what they wanted with this method while avoiding poisoning the well.